Recent Opinions

The world is full of unsolved problems. It is also full of problems for which solutions already exist, if we only leverage them. When we slow down for a minute, consider the available options, and more carefully assess the consequences of various modes of action, we have a better chance of directing our efforts where they ought to go–for the good of ourselves and the issues we face.

Matthew Cohen ’18 and Johnathan Bowes ’15 debate whether Puerto Rico should become the 51st state in the United States. Cohen urges us to question the previous votes in Puerto Rico as well as its tremendous debt while Bowes argues the US should respect the will of Puerto Ricans in whatever they choose.

Former English Department chair Martin Evans dies

Professor of English John Martin Evans, a staunch defender of the humanities who taught at Stanford for almost 50 years, died on Sunday night at his on-campus home, according to an email sent to English majors by department chair Gavin Jones on Wednesday morning.

“He was a wonderfully warm and generous person,” Jones said. “I remember him for his energetic affection for literature, his dedication to undergraduates, his wry humor and general good spirited love of literature and also his great dedication to the department and to the University.”

Evans was born in Cardiff, Wales, in 1935 and earned a B.A., M.A. and D.Phil from Oxford University. He moved to Stanford in 1963, becoming an Assistant Professor of English.

From 1977 to 1981, Evans served as the Associate Dean of Humanities and Sciences. He became the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the English Department in 1981, a position he held for five years, and served as Chair of the English Department from 1988 to 1991.

“He had strong views and let them be known, so I think he shaped the department over the years in many, many ways,” said Professor of English John Bender, who met Evans in 1967. “He was a Welshman, and full of the kind of energy and spiciness that people associate with Wales.”

Evans wrote a piece for Stanford Magazine in March 2009 titled “What Good Are the Humanities,” in which he argued that the humanities remain relevant while encouraging students to try to understand different perspectives.

“Both kinds of knowledge, the objective knowledge of the sciences and the social sciences and the subjective knowledge of the humanities are necessary, I believe, if we are to achieve even an approximate understanding of our fellow human beings,” Evans wrote.

Other faculty members and students said that Evans was known for his vibrant personality and commitment to undergraduate teaching.

“There has never been a time when Martin Evans was not at the center of the English Department, and I’ve been here for a long time,” Professor of English Kenneth Fields said in a statement to The Daily. “He filled the room with his crisp voice and laugh.”

Miles Osgood ’11 audited one of Evans’ classes as a high school senior, an experience that persuaded him to attend Stanford and pursue an English major. Evans eventually became Osgood’s major advisor, with Osgood describing him as “very sweet, very fun-loving and very much loving what he did.”

“I remember having a conversation with him a couple of years ago where he said the school had been trying to offer him more and more generous retirement packages over the years,” Osgood said. “[Evans] said ‘Nope, I’m going to stay here forever.’”

Osgood said he was particularly impressed by Evans’ knowledge of the poet John Milton, a sentiment echoed by Kyle O’Malley ’13, a student advisor for the Department of English who took a class taught by Evans last fall and who served on several committees with him.

“Milton was kind of like his bread and butter,” O’Malley said. “If you wanted to learn about Milton at Stanford, you took a class from Martin Evans. He was this incredible master of Milton that we had the privilege of having for so long, somebody who really became a jewel in the diadem of our department.”

O’Malley said that Evans was an extremely popular choice for English students looking for a major or thesis advisor.

According to Bender, Evans was also involved in some of the administrative aspects of the English department as a former chair, including searching for faculty and guiding promotions.

“One of the things that was so striking about him was that he was so inclusive, so welcoming,” said Professor of English Michele Elam, who described Evans as very supportive of female faculty members to the extent of encouraging them to take leadership positions.

Elam said that Evans served as her “unofficial mentor” when she first began teaching at Stanford. One afternoon shortly after she joined the faculty, Evans invited Elam to his office for a casual conversation that ended up lasting two and a half hours.

“We sat down and just talked about his classes and my classes, and he was so unpretentious and so welcoming,” she said. “He knew so much about not just his field, but about the profession and the department, and he was willing to share that knowledge with me. That kind of intellectual generosity is rare.”

Evans was also an active volunteer, and received the Richard W. Lyman award for faculty volunteer service to the Stanford Alumni Association and Stanford University in 1990. He also won the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1985 and the Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1988, and was named an Honored Scholar by the Milton Society of America in 2004.

“He was a University citizen,” Bender said. “He wasn’t just a member of the English Department.”

Jones said that Evans had been ill for several months, and that his illness prevented him from teaching any courses this year.

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Carrying forward the interest in contemplation both at Windhover and during Contemplation by Design week, the Office for Religious life and HIP are collaborating to offer a labyrinth walking fundamentals [...]

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Carrying forward the interest in contemplation both at Windhover and during Contemplation by Design week, the Office for Religious life and HIP are collaborating to offer a labyrinth walking fundamentals workshop. This 2-session program will provide you with knowledge of the rich history and stress reduction and resilience-building benefits of the contemplative practice of labyrinth walking. Each session will begin in the classroom followed by a practicum of walking the Windhover labyrinth. Class will be held rain or shine. Please dress accordingly. Please note: registration required for this free class.

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COMFORT WOMEN WANTED brings to light the memory of 200,000 young women, referred to as “comfort women,” who were systematically exploited as sex slaves in Asia during World War II, and increases awareness of sexual violence against women during wartime. It is based on interviews with Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Filipino, and Dutch “comfort women” survivors and a former Japanese soldier from WWII conducted by the filmmaker, Chang-Jin Lee, a Korean-born visual artist from New York City.

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We are a social action VSO and bake challah bread on Thursdays at Hillel in the back building (across from the Haas Center). The proceeds this week go to MAZON: [...]

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We are a social action VSO and bake challah bread on Thursdays at Hillel in the back building (across from the Haas Center). The proceeds this week go to MAZON: a national non-profit working to end hunger among all faiths and backgrounds. We work with a variety of groups around campus, including social action groups, interfaith groups, and Greek life. Everyone is welcome to come join us in making challah.

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The Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics announces the second mini-course by Stanford physics faculty on recent fundamental advances in theoretical physics. The winter quarter's lectures will be by Professor Sean [...]

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The Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics announces the second mini-course by Stanford physics faculty on recent fundamental advances in theoretical physics. The winter quarter’s lectures will be by Professor Sean Hartnoll.

Black holes have the remarkable property of irreversibility: if you fall into a black hole you can’t get out (classically). This immediately suggested a connection with the other famous irreversibility in physics: the law of increase of entropy. Since the 70s, this connection between black holes and thermodynamic systems has been fleshed out in increasing detail and has lead to surprising conclusions. I will give an introduction to a recent body of work showing how black holes can in fact be used to shed light on exotic materials of interest in condensed matter physics, including the still-not-understood high temperature superconductors.

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THE LADY ONSTAGE explores the life and work of Olga Knipper, a name unfamiliar to most, but perhaps best known as “Chekhov’s wife”. Olga was a key creative genius in [...]

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THE LADY ONSTAGE explores the life and work of Olga Knipper, a name unfamiliar to most, but perhaps best known as “Chekhov’s wife”. Olga was a key creative genius in the history of modern theatre; she was not only the originator of the leading female roles in Chekhov’s four major plays, but also became the de facto chief representative of the Moscow Art Theater when they toured the United States. THE LADY ONSTAGE takes us into the psyche of an actress at the moment when theater changed forever, giving us an inside perspective on the radical choices artists make in the name of Art and Love.

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